April 19, 2012

On the most recent episode of Mad Men, Ken Cosgrove sits down to lunch with an editor from FSG (yes, we blushed). Cosgrove calls the publishing house “Farrar, Straus,” though by 1967 it had been “Farrar, Straus and Giroux” for nearly two years. But hey, old names die hard—our receptionist still answers the phone with “Farrar, Straus.”

So, what was FSG publishing in the late 1960s? I dug up an old catalogue to find out.

Apparently, the late Sixties at FSG were all about Lowell, Berryman, Sontag, and Wolfe. The trends were New Journalism and New Criticism: 1966 brought the debut book of essays from the “brilliant young social critic…Tom Wolfe," Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation, Lowell’s Near the Ocean, and A Reader’s Guide to T.S. Eliot.

Some of the highlights from 1967 include Berryman’s sonnets, Neruda’s The Heights of Machu Picchu, a collection of essays about Randall Jarrell (who had died two years earlier), and a centennial edition of The Golden Key with illustrations by Maurice Sendak and an afterword by W.H. Auden (pictured below).

Also, more New Criticism (Six Metaphysical Poets: A Reader’s Guide) and an adaption of Prometheus Bound by Lowell. In the introduction to the translation, Lowell's conservatism and the war really come through: “Half my lines are not in the original. But nothing is modernized," he writes. "There are no tanks or cigarette lighters. No contemporary statesman is parodied. Yet I think my own concerns and worries and those of the times seep in.”

By 1968, many of these writers were at the height of their careers: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and Homage to Mistress Bradstreet were all in the catalogue, though Berryman's long poem appears to have been published only reluctantly...and only in paperback.

April 01, 2011

I confess to being late to the party on Scribd.com. At first I thought it was a repository for journalists' primary sources (court documents, transcripts, etc.). Then a friend mentioned the site featured thousands of unpublished works of fiction, with several writers critiquing each other's work. It's both of these things, and, due to myriad other uses I have yet to discover, Scribd's blossomed into a very large community of readers.

So we're pleased to announce our partnership with them, starting with a selection of recent work by Les Murray, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Christian Wiman and others. We'll be adding more poetry throughout April, so please check back often.

April 30, 2010

Throughout the month FSG publisher, poet, and translator Jonathan Galassi will be adding his thoughts on various aspects of the poetry world.

Everything is going on. From very formal poetry to poetry that's indistinguishable from prose. There's multimedia poetry. Spoken poetry that's meant to be consumed that way. The auditory aspect of poetry is much more a part of the game. There's Dominique Raccah's site, poetryspeaks.com: they're doing exciting work.

It's about diversity. It's about multiple channels of expression. As the culture gets more unitary in certain ways, there has to be a countervailing freedom. Poetry is a place where that happens. I think there are a lot of affinities between that freedom in poetry and the Internet. The openness. Poetry is ideally suited to the Internet. It's easily digested, it's short, it’s easy to share.

April 28, 2010

As a successful poet, critic, and magazine editor, Meghan O’Rourke has a uniquely three-dimensional perspective on the publishing world of poetry and literature. We thought she’d be the perfect person to talk with for our editor interview series.

Formerly a literary editor at The New Yorker, Meghan now serves as a culture critic at Slate and as a poetry coeditor at The Paris Review. A book of her poems, Halflife, was released in 2007, and a memoir, The Long Goodbye, will be published by Riverhead in 2011.

Meghan kindly answered questions about her current projects, her varying roles as editor and writer, and the editorial process at The Paris Review. // Adam Eaglin

Can you tell us a bit about your role at The Paris Review?

I’m one of two poetry editors, which means I select poems (with my fellow editor). We read the “slush” pile of unsolicited poems, and we also solicit work from poets we admire. Sometimes we make suggestions to the poets about the poems. The job is pretty much like any other poetry editor’s job, except for the fact that there are two of us, so we have to agree. The idea is that together we create a bit of check and balance, so that we can try to be objective about the work. It also makes sure the poetry doesn’t stay too similar, I think. First I worked with Charles Simic, now I work with Dan Chiasson. In both cases our tastes overlap somewhat but not entirely, which means each of us sometimes champions and publishes a poem the other might not have gone for. I find it extremely illuminating to do this work with another writer—it’s like getting an intimate tour of another writer’s mind.

At TPR, do you feel an obligation to publish younger (or “emerging”) poets?

April 20, 2010

I was reading the lively conversation between Jonathan Galassi and Eileen Myles in Vice, and Eileen says, about living in San Diego, “There was a way in which you were really alienated from where you lived. There wasn’t a lot of conversation and there wasn’t a lot of encounter.” This reminded me of the feeling I had upon discovering Schuyler’s poems, those that became Other Flowers, which “live” in San Diego.

Here is the life’s work of this poet I’ve always loved and always known to be both intimate and exclamatory, his poems often about or because of conversation and encounter—even being the encounter itself—and his poems and things reside now in this city where everyone is alienated by design and is thus forced to make encounters happen. That feeling I’d had was initially one of some cruel irony. But as I thought of Schuyler, it began to make sense. In a way, he was always alienated and made his own encounters, whether with a Fairfield Porter painting, the first bud of spring, his gossipy friends, or the poems of Leopardi.

Now, two reviews of Other Flowers have — appropriately, mind you — mentioned Schuyler’s “prophetic” lines from "A Few Days": “when I’m dead, some creep will publish [my notebooks] in a thin volume called Uncollected Verse.” I am that creep, pleased to meet you. Having long been a devotee of Schuyler’s work, I was very much aware of these lines and duly considered them before spending four months wearing white gloves in a stuffy room, and five years of my life working on this volume, so that these poems might reach the audience they deserved, something I could not have done without the intrepid collaboration of my dear coeditor, Simon Pettet. It is my belief — and one that appears to be shared by a great many participants in this project — that, while there is no “The Morning of the Poem” or “Hymn to Life” in this collection, these poems are a necessary addition to the James Schuyler oeuvre we already know and love. I think he would be pleased.

April 24, 2009

I love the afterlife of publishing, and poetry has a particularly potent afterlife. As publishers, we see a book from the manuscript’s first draft to the finished pages bound between covers. In over twenty years in publishing, I have never lost the thrill of seeing the finished book for the first time. And if the e-mails (“such-and-such title has ARRIVED!”) and cries of excitement that reverberate around the office are any measure, my younger colleagues at Graywolf feel the same way on the day a box of new books is opened. A day or so after the book appears on our desks, it arrives at the author’s house, and he emails his (usually delightedly happy) reaction. Then (we hope) come the reviews.

Fiction tends to be reviewed close to the publication date; it sells well up front, and there is a lot of hooplah and attention. In any given month, it is normally the fiction—and certainly prose—that is selling the most copies. But poetry travels a different path, and must be judged over the long term. Reviews for a poetry book can still appear twelve to eighteen months after the book is first released, and all the time, the book’s slow and steady sales continue.

After about two years, the first chapter in the poetry book's life is done: sales have established their rhythm, the reviews are in, and there are no more prizes the book can be eligible for. At this point, arguably, the real test begins. Has the book registered? Are people reading it? One way in which a poetry collection's afterlife shows is in permission requests. We get about twenty-five permission requests a week, with about twenty-four of those for poetry. Poems within collections are discrete units; we never get requests for a single page in a novel, for example, in the way we get requests for a poem that occurs on a single page in a collection.

Permission is often requested for the poems to appear in anthologies, of which there are many: death, work in translation, work in a particular style, Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project, the grand canonical Norton anthologies, etc. Sometimes a composer wants to set the poem to music; sometimes it’s Garrison Keillor’s office requesting permission (usually after the fact!) for the poem to be read on the radio. The internet, too, is gathering momentum as a medium particularly suited to the wider distribution of poetry. We often get requests from the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Daily, and the Poetry Foundation for online use of our poets’ work. Regulating the use of poems on the internet is turning out to be a whole other, fascinating, conversation. But the single unit of the poem, making its way in the world, without the rest of the book, but perhaps drawing audiences back towards the wider body of work, seems like a journey to be encouraged.

You can find the second half of Fiona McCrae's mediation on the afterlife of poetry here.

April 02, 2008

One of the best things about last-year's Paul Muldoon ringtone is how a lot of readers weren't really sure how to take it--was it serious, or were we having fun with the idea of what poetry is? Perhaps I needed to present it with a bit more light heartedness (I knew I should have taken video of the hilarity that ensued when the ring was played for FSG employees, bloggers, and my mom).

Because the cool thing, I think, about the oxymoronic idea of a poetry ringtone is that it's playful, it's silly, and it clearly comes from a poet who takes his work seriously enough to have a little fun with it.

This ringtone calls to my mind the title poem ofGulfMusic, which forced me to read it aloud to myself--on the subway, no less!--with lines like

Mallah walla tella bella. Trah mah trah-la, la-la-la, Mah la belle.

Ippa Fano wanna bella, wella-wah.

Fair enough, the subject matter of Gulf Musicand the idea behind this ringtone couldn't be further apart. But they're both the same in a way, they're both about listening and hearing language spoken aloud.

But enough from me--listen to Pinsky speak it for yourself, maybe download it for your April ringtone. And after the jump, some video of his latest television appearance.

April 02, 2007

Ringtones say a lot about a person. Are you a vibrate--all-the-time on silent, with the phone secreted in your pocket? Or a top 40--set on single handedly saving the record industry with all the tracks your phone has? Or maybe you’ve even decided to go classic, with a ring that actually sounds like a telephone?

But I bet nobody’s got a ringtone like this: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon has written and recorded an original couplet available for free download to your cell phone. It goes:

“It’s only me, trying to get through

I’d really love to talk to you”

Delivered in a fantastic, soothing Irish brogue. You can listen to it here:

And what will this ringtone say about you? Maybe some of these quotes from reviews of Paul Muldoon’s latest books will help you decide: ‘immense wit;’ ‘a knockout;’ ‘full of manic glee;’ ‘plays guitar in a garage rock band; ‘seriously literary;’ ‘I have always had a soft spot for Paul Muldoon.’ Download it for free to your cell phone here.

And be sure to bring your hot new cell phone ring to our event on April 16th at The Strand, where Paul Muldoon will be locked in a full-tilt poetry battle! You'll be able to buy copies of Horse Latitudes and The End of the Poem at the event, or you cangetthemonline now.

March 30, 2007

Farrar, Straus and Giroux was founded in 1946 by Roger W. Straus. The firm is renowned for its international list of literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s books. Farrar, Straus and Giroux authors have won extraordinary acclaim over the years, including numerous National Book Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, and Nobel Prizes in literature.

February 28, 2007

Ami Greko is currently the marketing director at Folio Literary Management, where she works with authors and publishing houses to create comprehensive publicity campaigns that utilize internet, regional and grassroots marketing, in addition to traditional publicity methods. She previously worked at FSG and Viking Penguin.

Ryan Chapman is the Internet Marketing Coordinator for Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He has worked with Alex Ross, Sandeep Jauhar, and Colin Harrison.

Brian Gittis is an Associate Publicist at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He has worked with Etgar Keret, Roberto Saviano, Amy Irvine, and Fiona Maazel.